Has the view on success evolved over time? Are we more
materialistic today than the 1960’s and 1970’s? After asking a few of my
co-workers for their definition on success, they clearly defined it by their
annual income, status in their position, and what they own, such as a house,
car etc. Where on the other hand I had asked my parents for their definition of
success and they defined it by happiness, obtaining their goals and having a
family. With today’s evolving technology and media, we see the influence on
youth materialism and the importance of money. “The belief
that having money and possessions is the most important thing in life”, according to Cambridge Dictionary
this is the definition of materialism
The first smart phone was invented by IBM in 1992 and today 78%of teens now have a cell phone and Nine in ten (93%) teens have a computer orhave access to one at home, with these statistics from a survey done in
2013, we see that youth has more accessibility to media and advertisement with
just the touch of their fingertips. With this facility to reach the newest trend,
the latest model of car, the highest paying job available, teens today develop more
of a sense of materialism. Rather than in the 1960’s and 1970’s the
accessibility to media and advertisement was only on billboards, product
packaging and television.
With this facility to
media and advertisement my curiosity got the best of me. Having entered in the
search engine on google “the definition of Success today” and viewing the
images, it is only to see that the sixth image that appears, is a picture of
many 100 dollar bills and many pictures that follow have to do with the stock
market, men in suits or obtaining a wealthy paying job by going to university. On
the other hand I entered in the same search engine “the definition of success
in the 1960’s and 1970’s” and the sixth picture that appears is a picture of
the “Beatles” and the images that follow are peace activist that happened in
the 1960’s and 1970’s or historical events. Although we see images of historical
events or great artist that developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s, we still develop
a sense that the definition of success in that generation was about voicing
your opinion, family, friends or finding ur true identity as a community and
about “Peace and Love”. Whereas today’s images of success are more individualistic
and materialistic.
According to Kasser; Schor;
Korten, studies “they have found that people often interact with socializationagents and then take in consciously and unconsciously social norms, values,beliefs, attitudes and behaviors endorsed by these agents”, with this in mind all
the advertisement and media (socialization agents) accessibility to youth
today, consciously or unconsciously they develop values and beliefs that the
true meaning of success is in obtaining lots of money and material processions.
This leads to youth today being very materialistic.
Although many youth today dream of obtaining those goals and aspirations
that define our success, without realizing, media and technology has influenced
those decisions on what drives those goals and it is the annual income that
they will obtain or what latest model of car they can purchase, rather than the
happiness of “Peace and Love”. This suggests that advertising may play a crucial role in the development of youth materialism.
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